158 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
it applied to himself. Your mother will tell you 
what it means). 
So the flowers prayed to the sun from whom 
they have their beautiful colours, and the sun made 
them like jewels—jewels of the rose and the 
violet, of the lily and the daffodil, the sunflower, 
the pink and carnation. Perhaps they were not 
just the same flowers as those, for they grew 
in America, but they had all their colours and 
many more. ‘That is an improvement certainly,” 
said the Humming-bird, when he had looked at 
them. ‘You are much more beautiful now, but 
you remain the same all day long. It is very 
different with the sky. Every morning and evening 
when the sun rises and sets, she has quite a 
special beauty, and it is only then that she can be 
said to be refulgent. If it were so with you, then 
I might take you, but I do not care for flowers 
who have no sunrise or sunset.” So the flowers 
prayed to the sun again, and he made them as 
much more beautiful when he rose and set at 
morning and evening as the sky is then in the east 
and west. And when the Humming-bird saw that 
they were really refulgent, he took all their colours, 
and, for a little while, the flowers were quite pale, 
and only got bright again by degrees. But they 
never flashed and sparkled like jewels any more, 
